


Statement

by Moths_Spiders_Books



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 04:43:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12573972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moths_Spiders_Books/pseuds/Moths_Spiders_Books
Summary: Statement of Dr. Jane Smith, regarding the death of Gerard Keay.  The good doctor has other things on their mind, which they also wish to discuss.  Mild, esoteric spoilers for season 2.





	Statement

I’m only here at a dying man’s request. Just so you know.

We’ve had enough clashes over the years for you to know where I stand on your institute and what it stands for and what it works for and all the horrors you’ve beheld instead of helping. Some things can’t be changed, you say. Not our place. Besides, what can we do against such vast and incomprehensible powers ranged against us? Anything would be better than what you’re doing now, which is fuck all. But you wouldn’t, would you? I know what you serve.   
  
Aware of your own weakness, you sold yourself - and I suppose the dumb, bewildered fucks who work here - to the apparently kindest master.  No bursting into flames, no spiders, no worms, no teeth in the darkness…just watching.  
  
Anyway, Gerard Keay is dead. Autopsy says brain tumor. A big one, a nasty one, but a hidden one. He only found out a fortnight before he passed and only by complete accident. He got into a fight before he died, didn’t he? Not a bad one, but he came to us anyway. Mild concussion, he thought. Said he had bad experiences when it came to the NHS and we like Gerard. Did a scan. There it was. As big as a fist. You’d think that something like that would have symptoms but apparently not.

 I’m not accusing you of being able to conjure up brain tumors. I wouldn’t give you that much credit. But the fight’s what interests me. Not like him to be taken by surprise. I can feel your hand in it, somehow.  _Our_ Gerard was always so careful, so prepared. Sure, he fucked up. As do we all when we’re faced with  _vast and incomprehensible_  powers. We know that one day it’ll probably kill us.  Or worse, of course. What exactly happens to you archivists?  You won’t end up on our doorstep like the rest of the rest of the damaged and broken things that used to be people but aren’t.   
  
Anyway. Gerard. We put him up because we repay people who look after us. He wouldn’t say what he was fighting but he refused in that way that he has that anyone who knows him long enough…you never got to know him, though. Not really. And he would have been invaluable. But there was too much of Mary Keay in him and the Institute’s never tolerated loose cannons. But inheritance is as much about lack as it is about presence and the lack of interest you showed in Gerard Kaey shaped him as much as any of his mother’s influence. But  I suppose we should be glad you never got your greasy hands on him.   
  
Like I said, he asked me to come and speak to you before he died. Not about anything specific, just that he died.  To tell you specifically, Gertrude Robinson. I asked him what you two were to each other but he shrugged. He was hooked up to pretty much everything we had at that point. Palliative care was all he wanted. We’re not a hospice, despite what you and Section 31 and the rest of them think, but we’ve got enough to make people comfortable.   
  
Gerard said he didn’t mind the occasional bouts of screaming from our more lively inhabitants.   
“Dying as I lived,” he said. “Going nowhere and surrounded by screaming.” He laughed as if it was actually funny. “ _Don’t hope for things elsewhere_  .”   
  
He’s a deep soul, our Gerard. We saw a lot of each other in those last three weeks. I got to know him. Well, as much as anyone got to know Gerard Keay.  I can’t quite accept that he’s dead. I  _know_ he’s dead. Every tall man in a long leather jacket is Gerard. Every shadow in the corner. Our Gerard has left his coffee to go cold on the windowsill, much to the Ward Sister’s annoyance. He’s buzzing for more painkillers. But some part of me doesn’t believe it yet. There was something about Gerard that seemed…eternal.  
  
He went to Italy once. Only time he left England, he said. He couldn’t travel, he said. It was a waste of time. He was hoping that he’d find something different but it was the same everywhere. More quotation:  _“Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world._ ”  
  
I told him that it wasn’t a waste. He told me I didn’t have the right to judge. I suppose I don’t.  Your Mr. Bouchard says we are just a sophisticated version of artefact storage, but for people. Not true. We have dogs as well. Or dog shaped things. You remember those, don’t you?   
  
His only other visitor was a man who I presumed was a lawyer. Three weeks isn’t very long to wrap up a life, is it? I wonder what you lot would have done if he’d turned up on the Institute’s doorstep.  Sent him back off to us I suppose. Or not. Maybe your Mr. Bouchard would have thrown him into one of Smirke’s tunnels and leave him to spend his last few days wandering around in the dark. After you took his story from him, of course. That is what the Institute wants, isn’t it? The only thing.  It never occurs to you that you’re not entitled to it.  
  
 Anyway, this is the minimum amount I can get away with without making it look suspicious. I promised Gerard I’d come and tell you that he was dead and I have. That’s all I have to tell you. All the conversations we had, leading up to the end, all the things he knew, all that he told me - that belongs to me. Those words are part of my story.  Which, as I have made abundantly clear, you will never, ever have.  My...institution is just as old as yours. Think of all I’ve done and all I’ve seen.  I will never give another statement and when I go the same way as Gerard Keay  everything I know will be lost.   
  
Even this statement is likely to discarded. The obviously false name will get it dismissed out of hand. And  I’m submitting it around Halloween, when I know you get flooded with joke statements. I won't let you have even this.   
  
You believe you have a  higher purpose. You are the proximate hand of something that is not quite a god because no god of human imagining could be that powerful. And that’s the useful excuse that you hide behind when someone calls you to account for not doing anything; your apathy isn’t a question of moral weakness, it’s part of your purpose. A purpose that was created for you, which you submit to without question.   
  
Gerard said that I was unfair. That I struggled to comprehend... but that conversation is not for your eyes.   
  
Here’s the poem that Gerard was quoting from, by the way. I thought you might find it interesting. 

  
The City by C.P Cavafy __  
  
You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,   
find another city better than this one.   
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong   
and my heart lies buried like something dead.   
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?   
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,   
I see the black ruins of my life, here,   
where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”   
  
You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.   
This city will always pursue you.   
You’ll walk the same streets, grow old   
in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.   
You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:   
there’s no ship for you, there’s no road.   
Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,   
you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world.   
  
Good luck with your beholding, Gertrude.  It’s all you’ve got. 

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, this fic isn't strictly within the bounds of the challenge, but I think submitting something is better than nothing. 
> 
> It's essentially a statement from someone explaining why they would never give a statement.


End file.
